Hearts of Stone Read Free Page A

I suppose I grinned as much as anyone, and wished the customers the compliments of the season, but I didn’t enjoy the holidays one bit. I might even have gone a bit heavy at the Grand Marnier from time to time, when it all got too jolly to bear. But no one was counting. No one cared, to tell you the truth.
    I could have had Judith down, I suppose. But to see her for a bit and then lose her again would have been worse than not seeing her at all. So I spoke to her on the phone and sent cards and parcels. She sent me two cards back. She pretended one was from my ex-wife, but I knew better, though I didn’t say so. And she sent me a great baseball cap. It’s all American up in Aberdeen apparently. It was a real quality one, with an adjustable leather strap at the back, and a picture of an oil rig embroidered on the front. I felt ridiculous wearing it outside, but I’d put it on sometimes when I was in the flat alone. Just so that I felt closer to her. Stupid, I know. I wore it when I ate my Christmas dinner by myself, with just the Queen on the box for company. Not one of my happiest meals. But I survived.
    Christmas was followed by the kipper season over January and February, with no one spending much, but we did all right in the bar, even so.
    Then winter began to soften into spring as the world turned, until one early morning in March it all came on top again. Just like it always does, sooner or later.

5
    I woke up with the beam of a 1000-candlepower torch in my eyes. It was a sudden awakening. The kind they like. The kind that the Nazis, fascists, the secret men have used since time began. Since our ancestors hid in caves and waited for those with the power of life and death to come for them with flaming brands held high against the dark. It was the kind of awakening that robs you of your manhood. Makes you like a child who wants his mother. Undignified. Scary.
    I was naked under the sheet and the duvet. I sat up quickly, and was pushed back hard. I raised my arm to shade my eyes from the light, but someone knocked it away. Then a hand appeared. A hand holding a police warrant card, all neat in a leather folder. A big hand, with bitten-down nails and nicotine stains between the first and second fingers. Detective Inspector Chiltern, it read in the spill of the torch’s light.
    â€˜What do you want?’ I said rustily.
    â€˜Stay still and shut up,’ said a voice. ‘Police. We want to talk.’
    Police. Why? I thought. My conscience was clear. As clear as it was ever going to be.
    â€˜What do you want?’ I said again.
    â€˜We want you. Get up and let’s go. Don’t mess about.’
    â€˜I’ve got no clothes on,’ I said stupidly.
    My dirty shirt and jeans landed on the covers in front of me. I sat up and pulled on the shirt. It stank of the bar. I hate that. I swung my legs out of the bed and pulled on my blue jeans. No underwear. But I was glad of anything to cover me: to get back a vestige of dignity.
    I stood up to button the fly. The clock on the table next to me said 3.59. Then it moved silently to 4.00. I’d been in bed less than two hours.
    I found my shoes and slipped my bare feet into them. I stood there in the beam of the torch and peered beyond it. Into the blackness made even blacker by its light. ‘What’s the big idea?’ I demanded. I was beginning to feel a little braver with some clothes on.
    The main light in the room was suddenly switched on, and the power of the beam diminished slightly. There were two average-looking blokes standing looking at me. The one by the light switch was six foot or so, with long greasy yellow hair going a bit thin at the front and pulled into a ponytail at the back. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, jeans and cowboy boots, and looked vaguely familiar. His mate with the torch was shorter, older, with thick brown hair and a week’s growth of stubble. He was wearing a similar leather, jeans again,